MENU

Ableton Live: An Introduction

Our Ableton Live short course is perfect for those looking to build a solid foundation in electronic music production.

Over 10 weeks, our expert tutors will provide you with the knowledge and skills required to produce and mix audio using Ableton’s flagship Digital Audio Workstation.

Course length: 10 weeks (2 hours per week)

Cost: £20 per week

Entry Requirements: No formal qualifications required although a good understanding of computer principles and file handling is expected.

Weekly sessions will consist of roughly an hour of tutorial and one hour of practical application with an experienced tutor. At the culmination of the course, each student will have completed a full electronic track, learned the fundamentals of electronic music production and will have built a solid foundation in Ableton live software.

Weekly Schedule

Week 1

Introduction to the course and a demonstration of what students will achieve across the course duration. Introduction to Ableton Graphical User Interface (Clip View, Arrangement Page, Device View, Browser and Toolbars) Students begin by browsing for sounds and importing audio.

Week 2

Explanation of working with audio in the Clip View, explanation of grid settings and warping, looping, loop brace and loop truncate / editing. Students introduced to recording of external audio.

Week 3

Working with MIDI and MIDI loop creation and editing. Working with VST instrument plug ins, and discussion of the difference between MIDI and Audio clips. Quantisation of recorded MIDI data will be discussed, and applying looping concepts, described in previous classes, will be applied to MIDI.

Week 4

Plug ins and processing. Processors will be discussed and applied to sessions created over the last few weeks, discussing various effect types, use of Send Returns and auxiliary tracks. Use of insert effects to use effects creatively to alter loops and concepts from previous weeks.

Week 5

Class discussion and tutorial on arrangement techniques. Further description and usage of arrangement page to bring tracks to final composition stage. Taking elements from Clip View and recording arrangements using MIDI controllers and capturing a live performance.

Week 6

Performances recorded in previous week will be edited and fine tuned to arrive at a final track arrangement using grid editing techniques, we'll also look at track nudge and track delay.

Week 7

At this stage the class will discuss each others work so far. Students will be given constructive criticism on each others work alongside the tutors comments to address any elements they may want to fix or think about further. Class will also be introduced to the concept of bussing and creating stems from their component parts.

Week 8

Mixing stage begins. Class will now have fully arranged tracks - we will now start to talk about EQ, Compression, and use of Reverb and Delay in more depth to create a final mix. Bussing concepts from previous week will be used by students to break their tracks into constituent parts. Basic automation of level and effects will also be discussed.

Week 9

Students concentrate on final mix of their tracks. Purely practical week to finalise their work.

Week 10

Students will create a finished bounce of their work to a high quality WAV file for storage to disk. Students will showcase their finished tracks to classmates for final critical evaluation.

Tuition Booking

Musical Instrument tuition and industry short courses to suit you! All ages, all skill levels.